IRS Unpopularity Contest

The tax man's political speech rule gets more than 100,000 comments.

Feb. 27, 2014 7:16 p.m. ET

This week the IRS was the place to be in Washington, but not because it was suddenly popular. Thursday was tax agency's deadline for comment on its proposal to clip the free speech rights of 501(c)(4) nonprofit groups, and much of America was screaming its disapproval. By the time the comment period closed, the rule had generated more than 100,000 individual responses from across the political spectrum, more than 10 times as many as the regulatory runner-up.